Back in the 1990s, a battle to sign up customers for long-distance calling services raged among several big telecom vendors. Readers who lived in the pre-smartphone era probably remember receiving unsolicited phone calls that often started with a question: How satisfied are you with your long-distance service?
Changing long-distance providers, call-center employees and thousands of hours of television advertisements assured us, was easy! And it could save you money, cure the common cold and shield you from sadness for the rest of your life. Or something like that. But the idea was that long-distance service was just a commodity, not something that actually provided value. Switching was a cost-cutting measure and not much more.
Fast forward a few decades, and some MSPs find themselves falling into the trap long-distance providers fell into: Selling their services based more on cost savings than real value and turning their offerings into mere commodities. If you don’t want your clients wondering how satisfied they are with your MSP service, you need to become more than just IT help. You need to be a trusted business partner.
Why should MSPs care about being trusted business partners?
But the MSP business is booming, right? Demand outstrips supply. The average MSP grew by almost 13% in 2023, according to Canalys, and the MSP market is set for double-digit growth until 2027. JumpCloud fond that an MSP completely manages the IT environment for 42% of small and midsize businesses (SMBs), a 56% increase over 2023. Why should MSPs worry about lost business, then?
The potential problem isn’t with the MSP market. It could be with your business. Back in 2022, Action1 found that only 22% of SMBs were satisfied with their MSPs. A larger percentage, nearly a quarter, was unsatisfied and looking to replace an MSP within a year, if not sooner. So, while there might be plenty of business to go around, there’s nothing stopping your competitor or some new entrant into your market from stealing your clients.
The biggest problem SMBs have, the Action1 survey found, was performance issues, followed by outages and slow response times to client requests. So, if you’re getting your basics right, you’re less likely to lose clients than MSPs that aren’t. But there’s another factor at play: SMBs want more from their MSPs than simple IT services.
Your clients probably want more services than you’re providing
Just like those old long-distance offerings, your services can be fairly easy to replace if you’re just an IT provider. One bad day, in fact, could lead your clients to look elsewhere. You need to establish yourself as a trusted business partner your clients can’t live without — and that’s what they want from you, too.
Nobody likes to have to deal with multiple vendors for anything. If your clients are having to supplement your services with in-house employees or by engaging with other service providers, you’re putting your business at risk. MSPs themselves recognize that clients just want their stuff to work, and if you can’t make it work, they’ll find somebody who can. What’s more, they’ll find an MSP that can take care of as many IT functions as possible, particularly cybersecurity,
Plus, businesses actually perform better when they partner with MSPs strategically and not just as providers of basic IT services. PWC found in a survey of mostly midsize companies that businesses that engaged MSPs for “strategic advantage” as opposed to mere “cost savings” achieved greatly increased speed to market and innovation compared those that didn’t. The survey also found that high-level MSP engagement contributed to an overall model that led to companies earning 44% more than their competitors.
Partnerships strategies for MSPs
So, what can your MSP do to become more “sticky” for clients and less dispensable? There are five partnership strategies you can follow:
1. Get the basics right
Again, if you’re providing reliable services, you’re putting yourself in an advantageous position. SMBs want business continuity above everything else.
2. Pitch yourself as a consultant
You’re not just an IT person to your clients. You’re their window into a world they don’t understand and don’t really want to. You could tell them just about anything, and they would believe it. That gives you both a duty to guard their trust and an opportunity to consult on issues that go beyond storage and implementing laptops. Don’t hesitate to offer advice on topics that involve but go beyond technology. Perhaps the key tenant of a partnership strategy is to prove your value to a client. Do this and the client is more likely to stick with you.
3. Think about new services you can offer right now
You’re probably capable of offering services that you’ve never offered and that your clients don’t even know exist. The JumpCloud survey found that 27% of SMBs use MSPs for change management — a broad category that can easily move into helping to define business strategies or automating repetitive processes. Your clients want your help. It’s ok to offer it to them. Evaluate how you can expand your portfolio without making any major changes to your business. There are almost assuredly hidden opportunities.
4. Broaden your practice areas
Nobody can become an expert in anything overnight, but you need to take look at how your MSP can build expertise for the long term in a wide variety of service areas. Hiring is an option, but training might work better. If you can take your best employees and help them expand their areas of expertise, you can confidently offer new services to clients. Many MSPs and experts agree that the biggest area of opportunity lies in offering cybersecurity services. A CompTIA survey found that nearly two-thirds of businesses used third-party firms for cybersecurity management. Expanding your practice areas can be an ongoing commitment to the future of your MSP, but it is a vital partnership strategy for any MSP.
5. Invest in the right technology
Your clients don’t want to deal with multiple service providers, and you shouldn’t have to deal with multiple vendors. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud delivers natively integrated backup, disaster recovery, security, automation and management in a solution that’s easy to deploy. It also integrates easily with more than 200 other applications. With Acronis Cyber Protect, you don’t need to cobble together multiple applications, and you’ll have the fastest and most effective method of entry into providing reliable cybersecurity for your clients and running your MSP business efficiently.
Customer retention is growth for MSPs
A survey by Technology Marketing Toolkit revealed that nearly 40% of MSPs rely entirely on referrals for acquiring new business. Upselling and cross-selling also tend to be cheaper than bringing in new business. Customer retention is critical for your business. If you know how to make yourself an indispensable partner to your clients, you can become a trusted business partner.
About Acronis
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 50+ countries. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses.
